China Has Released True Color HD Photos of the Moon

Back then every photographer knew that various color films of the same type would render scenes differently. Every manufacturing process produces biases in results, the color-forming dyes at the core of color films responded in subtly distinguishable ways reflecting their explicitly unique chemical compositions.

In the current digital era, vendors produce "image processing engines" that correspond to film chemistry and just as variable. Camera-makers advertise particular "color signatures" to help promote sales and brand loyalty.

Relevantly, witness the endless discussion in photo "gear forums" over which rendition is the most "correct". Arguably we could say "all of the above", a case could be made one is as accurate as another since there is no single standard measurement of "accuracy".

Bottom line is I wouldn't expect any given Hasselblad to produce two photos with the same color rendering when they're shot on different brands of film. Comparing the Apollo moon landscape with the Chinese digital images will inevitably show differences, but we couldn't really say which is closer to how it "really" looks.

The "strongest" version is that we have landed many spacecraft on the moon (placing mirrors, artifacts, etc), but the human part was staged. I think a Chinese photo of clear and obvious _human_ presense on the moon actually would be a big deal as far as putting all the craziness to bed.

The main argument is that the lunar landings weren't manned for one or more of the landings. And indeed, right there on the page, it says:

> Smaller retroreflectors were also put on the Moon by the Russians; they were attached to the unmanned lunar rovers Lunokhod 1 and Lunokhod 2.

The existence of the Russian retroreflectors shows reflectors could be deployed without human intervention.

And further:

> Lick Observatory attempted to detect from Apollo 11's retroreflector while Armstrong and Aldrin were still on the Moon but did not succeed until August 1, 1969.[197] The Apollo 14 astronauts deployed a retroreflector on February 5, 1971, and McDonald Observatory detected it the same day.

The argument here is that if the retroreflectors were deployed by Apollo 11, they should have been detectable within the day, not 10 days after their supposed human caused deployment.

Again, this is just the argument presented, not an endorsement.